


You Can See Me Stand on My Own Again

by fracturedvaels



Category: Until Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Study, Gen, Isolation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-25
Updated: 2015-09-25
Packaged: 2018-04-23 08:16:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4869776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fracturedvaels/pseuds/fracturedvaels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hannah recognizes and drags Mike off instead of Josh. Lost in the mines, it's not the others that come to his rescue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Can See Me Stand on My Own Again

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by this tumblr post http://until-dong.tumblr.com/post/129832819888/au-where-instead-of-taking-josh-hannah-drags-mike

He has the head in his hands when it happens.

The teeth scrape his fingers as they pull it out. It goes rolling across the group, smacking to the wall with a soft  _squish_. The hunger that’s been haunting him turns to anger and he turns to lurch with his fingers curled to claws and his lip curled and his - 

There’s a snap. Again. A rough barking; a warning growl. The wolf is standing in a defense-crouch, snarling at him.

Mike is stopped where he’s at. He’s still so hungry - the ache gnawing into him like the cuts and bruises on his face - but the anger has disappeared in the face of what feels like an  _old friend_.

Wolfie, he thinks. Maybe he thinks it. Or it clings to his mind like everything else does: as a distant memory, as a ghostly touch. The wolf isn’t growling anymore and Mike feels safe enough to reach his hands out with shaking hands, to slide them through thick fur, feels safe enough with himself to practically collapse as he leans forward and wraps his arms around Wolfie and sob. He makes wounded-animal howls and the warmth from the wolf in his arms, nuzzling to his chin and neck, pawing at his arms - 

It makes the hunger number. Mike doesn’t know if that’s because there’s nothing in the wolf that he’s driven to eat or if it’s because the wolf is familiar and friendly to him.

He sits there for a while, crouched in the cave. He’d die curled up with Wolfie in his arms if there wasn’t a lick at his face, a tugging force. His companion is pulling free and though Mike finds his arms hanging limp at his sides, fingers still curled, resigned to be left behind, Wolfie appears to be having none of it.

He nudges one of Mike’s hands, then takes a tattered sleeve in his teeth and pulls. It takes several tugs; Mike is tired, and he’d rather lie down, and just sleep, but he knows he wouldn’t get back up if he did. So he struggles, finds it in himself to climb up onto his shaking legs.

He uses the cave walls to steady himself and takes several rough breaths. He looks over at the head again. It would be  _easier_  to just - to just go to it and - 

And Wolfie lets out a soft growl. Because he knows, because animals are clever like that. So he looks at the wolf and nods, gesturing out.

“Lead the way.”

* * *

 

It feels like time is stretching, infinite. He doesn’t have energy to replay any of the events of the past day (days?), so he stumbles and drags himself onward. Wolfie will pause, when Mike does, nudging at his legs and whining softly. That same lack of energy for remembrance keeps Mike from being angry with him.

Wolfie leads him first to water. A cold stream, and it hurts to crouch down and cup his hands and bring water to his mouth. Another easy way out - it’s deep enough, he could let himself fall over. Pitch into the waters and end this. He can’t see there being any other out, now. But Wolfie is there by him and nudging him when he leans a little too much.

So Mike drinks until his throat isn’t hurting, until his stomach feels a little fuller. And when Wolfie leads on, he walks by the stream; and when Mike pauses and crouches to drink, Wolfie lets him. Mike doesn’t think about all the disgusting things that might be swimming around in the stream, what it might do to him. He’s fairly certain this is unsanitary. But if it buys him a few more minutes...

Wishful thinking. Imagination is cheap.

He pushes onward, till he sees the warm gold of the sun reflected on the snow.

It’s... not dawn. Not quite; far too bright for that. But it’s not close to night, by his guess. The air outside is even colder with the biting wind and there’s black smoke on the horizon, near enough he could walk to it in a few hours.

He does not. Wolfie does not lead him to it. He nudges Mike’s hand and leads him down a different direction. It is struggle still to stumble through the trees, and many times he slips and almost goes tumbling down a deep hill; he batters his shoulders, his face, his arms even worse, twists his ankle, it all hurts  _so badly_.

He thinks he hears whispering, in the trees. It keeps him from lingering when he falls.

But as he walks, he talks. Not just to Wolfie, though the wolf pays attention to him; but to... others. Beth. Apologizing, for all that had happened; for the year before. To Matt, for being so nasty, and Emily for breaking her heart; to Jessica for not doing more to find her, and Sam for being so short. He apologizes to Chris for leaving Josh in the shed.

And he apologizes to Josh. For leaving him there. For leaving him in the mines. But he thinks about Hannah, too, and he can’t form words to apologize to her - he thinks about Hannah and how if he hadn’t done what he’d done to her, Josh wouldn’t have taken them up there. This wouldn’t have happened.

He doesn’t think he could ever fall in love with Hannah. But she was a good person. She had such a warm heart and - and she didn’t deserve it, anything they’d done to her. They’d ruined her life for a joke, at her own party. And ruined Josh’s.

Mike realizes he’s been talking out loud. Focusing on his friends and not his course, and he thinks for a moment he’s leaning against a tree but it’s too flat and solid and when he pulls back, he realizes it’s a cabin.

Or not. It’s a shack. With a window, and a bright red door. The wood is old and graying, but Wolfie paws at the door gingerly and when Mike tries the handle, it jiggles but won’t open. So he pulls back and slams with a frustrated shoulder, several times, until it gives and sends him tumbling to the stone floor.

One room. Neatly stacked with very little supplies. A cot, and some blankets, and a cold hearth with a few pieces of wood. A stove. Old radio, a few lamps.

And a pinboard. With names. Stories. Newspapers. Mike sits on his knees on the floor of the shack and scans the walls. There is a cage with a pile of blankets in the corner that Wolfie trots to, and Mike realizes this must have been one of the Stranger’s hold ups. How many dot the mountain? There must be several. He’d have needed them. Of course he wouldn’t have only stayed in the old sanatorium.

Mike finds himself... laughing. Loudly. He bows his head down till his forehead touches the old floor and he laughs, and then his shoulders start shaking and his side hurts and he starts crying, too.

* * *

 

He stays on the floor till the world starts dimming to pale grey. The sun is setting behind him. The strength he has is imitation, a copy; he crawls to the cot and uses it to push himself up, to the door and pushes it closed. It hangs a little where he busted the frame, but he finds an old crate to push in front of it to make it stay.

There is food. Not the kind he was craving, but it’s meat. Deer, he supposes; there’s some in a cooler, frozen, and some jerky, and he goes for the latter because it’s quick and it’s there. Wolfie paces around watching him eat, watching him drink, and while it takes a while for Mike to feel satisfied and for his stomach to stop hurting as badly and for him to feel like he’s not going to shit his intestines out, the wolf does not leave him. Except to fetch a blanket, which is warm in the dark cabin, and Mike manages to get himself up to the lamps to turn them on, and the hearth to start a fire with the tinder and the matches.

He can’t stay here. When he’s feeling rested enough, he goes for the radio, fiddles with the knobs till he hears voices, till they respond to him.  _I don’t know where I am_ , he says to them,  _on the mountain. Near the lodge. I saw the smoke._

But they’re SARs, and they’ll find him.  _Just stay put_ , they tell him - not that they really have to -  _you’re safer if you stay put._

So he does. Stuffs himself with jerky, and then with deer, when he can find strength again to warm it up. He can’t be assed to get it seasoned or make it look fancy, because he just needs food, and he’d eat it raw if he weren’t remembering Hannah and the other things in the mines with her.

Hannah.

Mike chokes a bit on his deer, and he starts crying again. A strange yowl, loud and twisted, beating his fists on the floor. Hannah, Hannah,  _Hannah_. What have they done? What had they done to her?

This was his fault. His friends - were they alive? Jessica? Emily?  _Josh_?

He remembers Josh’s twisted face - the tear streaks, the shaking, the begging. Josh’s fingers tight in Mike’s shirt, and Sam giving him her jacket because he was so cold. Josh clinging to Mike.  _She remembered, she remembered, she knew who I was._

“She knew who I  _was_ ,” he heaves out. There are flakes of meat and the plate has rolled and the food is on the floor. Wolfie lays down next to him and whines, nudging him. Mike doesn’t deserve that. He doesn’t deserve to be here - to be in this shack, safe and warm and waiting.

“Why did you come back?” He beats his fist again to the ground and sobs. “Why did you come back for me? You should’ve left me! I should have -  _I should have stayed!”_

It is anger in him again, but quick - like a sudden fire, and it dies like water was doused, when he raises his head and looks at Wolfie. Large eyes and soft white fur, and he leans up and nudges Mike’s face.

Wolfie... knows anger. And the hunger. And he remembers. But he licks Mike’s face like he’s gentle as a lamb, like he’s a pup again, nuzzles into his neck. Mike’s anger dies to sorrow again, weeping misery, and he sits back and pulls the wolf into his arms and cradles it like he’s cradling a body and begs forgiveness from someone who can’t forgive him anymore.

* * *

 

Mike stays like that. For a few hours, maybe. Till the tears stop, but the rocking doesn’t; till he’s warm from the hearth and the cabin is soft with dawn-light and his head is hurting and his arms and hands are sore.

He hears a pounding on the door. And he hears his name.  _Michael, Michael_ , but he doesn’t get up. That could be anything. Anyone. That could be  _Hannah._

 _Michael, Michael Munroe_ , and he presses his face to the wolf’s neck as the jammed door is pushed open and the cold air washes over him.

A pause. The air is dead around him.

“Mr. Munroe,” says the voice again. when he dares a glance up, it’s a SAR officer. And behind her is a man, who is not a SAR officer, but is bundled up and looking wide-eyed at him.

“Michael,” he pushes past her. “Oh, Michael, Michael,  _Michael_.”

Mr. Washington. He knew the mountain. Did he know the Stranger? The shack? Did he lead them here? But he didn’t know the wendigo, the monsters in the mines. “Michael,” he says, crouching down, reaching out, taking Michael’s face in his hands. “Oh, oh, I’m so glad.”

“Are they - ” he starts, shaking his head. Wolfie has slipped from his lap and hovers nearby, seemingly now remembering the forgotten deer steak nearby. Mr. Washington nods.

“Come on,” he sounds so shaky - so relieved - and Michael doesn’t want to move, because he wants this to be real, but it’s impossible and he is afraid. “Come on. Let’s get you home.”

**Author's Note:**

> i require constant validation and smell amazing, follow me at http://mtblackwood.tumblr.com


End file.
